Google Sales Chief To Web Marketers: Let's Hug It Out

Google and Yahoo's multi-front war to get their search deal proceeds. Newest salvo: Chief sales guy Tim Armstrong, who tries to explain to Association of National Advertisers, a trade group that has opposed the pact, why they're wrong. AdAge:

While most of the ANA members are customers of Google and Yahoo, there were definitely varied levels of understanding of the proposed search-ad system among them, he said.

The ANA said it wasn't supportive of the deal because it is wary of the long-term effects and its potential to raise prices and stifle competition in the search space. Mr. Armstrong suggested the wariness might also have do with Google's auction system, which treats all advertisers equally, regardless of their size -- something larger marketers and ANA members, used to leveraging their media scale, might not like.

But Tim has a solution: Google, Yahoo and their clients will gather in a big room and talk. Presumption: At the end the conversation, the scales will drop from the skeptics' eyes, and they'll line up behind Google and Yahoo again.

"Let's talk about the deal in public ... that's one of the things we're hoping the ANA will get behind," Mr. Armstrong said. "They're great customers of ours, and we'd love to have them understand the deal better."

Of course, if the Feds would just go ahead and bless this thing, as Google and Yahoo insisted they would earlier this summer, things would be a lot easier. Meanwhile, while Tim still had some stage time, he made another pitch for Google's very slow-starting foray into TV ads.

He also made a plea for search-engine marketers to use the Google TV Ads product, explaning that he told several agency CEOs last month that big advertisers can learn from the small advertisers that are using products such as Google TV Ads. With that new ad platform, Google plans to sell TV spots based not only on price but on how well an ad performs and has deals in place with EchoStar's Dish Network and NBC Universal.

"SEMs could get into this space and really do a great job because the larger people aren't used to taking the data and really changing the ads," he said.